New beginnings

I guess I've attempted blogging twice before but soon realized that, like most bloggers, I had little interesting to say. I suppose that hasn't changed much, but the relatively small amount online about sourdough baking suggests that a place where I can log my loaf attempts will serve me at least, and may help others too. Perhaps I'll have the occasional brainwave that I'll feel vital enough to post on any number of other topics, but for the readers' sake, I sure hope not.

Why sourdough? It goes back to a day in 1995 when I heard an ad on the radio for Samuel Adams beer, in which Jim Koch discussed the nature of Sam Adams' production process as small batches, "like those my grandfather brewed on the kitchen stove". My teetotaler roots (family and college both) prevailing, it never occurred to me that someone might be able to make beer in their kitchen. After a bit of asking and searching online (not an easy thing to do in 1995!) I discovered that the nature foods store around the corner from our house sold the equipment and supplies for making my own beer at home. With no kids at the time and some spare time, I started collecting bottles and making my own beer from a can of malt and a pack of yeast.

As I was reading about the history of brewing and homebrewing in particular, I encountered the ancient German beer purity law of Reinheitsgebot. Under this law, the only ingredients allowed in beer were barley, water and hops. With the exception of a Christmas brew in which I used winter spices, I attempted to create my beer as purely as I could, with the exception that I used live commercial yeast instead of relying on natural yeast as the old Bavarians would. Homebrewing was fun -- it was generally cheaper than buying good beer by the case and I enjoyed both the process and the product immensely. Not to mention that it was a hit at parties; just a few months before we left Connecticut, I ran into former colleagues who remember me as "the guy who brewed his own beer".

The problems with brewing is that it is labor-intensive, time-consuming and fills the house with a very strong, rich barley smell that non-beer-swilling wives don't enjoy very much. For a while, I would brew when Christy was away at work for the day and when I could air out the house before she got home. But when child #1 arrived, the days of brewing were sadly set aside, at least for a while.

The joy of the product is self-evident, but the process was even more fun and fulfilling. In many ways, since studying the daily office in college, I have been drawn to some of the monastic methods and at times even wondered if the monastery would have been a good vocation for me (but the costs, perhaps, outweigh the benefits...) I really like the idea of doing menial tasks with the hands to free the mind to focus on higher things: prayer, meditation, just finding space in the day to commune with God and brother. Brewing provided me with some of this monastic focus. When brewing had to go, I found similar space in the very menial work of filling little communion cups at church (you know, the plastic shot glasses of wine/grape juice used in many Protestant churches). I found this a particularly helpful time to pray for members of the congregation, in this particular case, that they would be filled with the presence of the risen Christ in the sacrament.

During the summer of 2006 while in grad school and sharing child care duty during the weekdays, I began to look for ways to break up the day and realized that bread baking provided many of the benefits of brewing, but could be confined to three 15 minute spurts of activity -- easily accomplished with a 3-year old in the house. Mix and knead. Go to the gym. Punch down and knead. Go to the library. Form loaves on the pizza stone and bake. Play with the kid. House fills with a great smell. Bread is amazing.

Christy liked the bread and I graduated from using loaf pans to forming round loaves and baking on a pizza stone. Then, I started baking loaves to use in communion.

Sometime after I started my current job assignment, I was discussing my bread with a senior member of the faculty in my department who sneered at my use of Fleischmann's yeast rather than a proper yeast culture in a sponge. So I started looking online to see where I could find a good starter. What I discovered was that I could order away for a King Arthur New England culture, several different starters claiming to be the authentic San Francisco strain, and of course Carl's starter. Or I could be brave and create my own starter. The old Betty Crocker cookbook has a starter recipe, but it uses commercial yeast. I found other starter recipes that used potato starch, honey, numerous kinds of flour. Then I found a recipe for a starter that used flour and water. This reminded me of the Reinheitsgebot and I gave it a shot.

After two days (and a strong desire to do something productive after a minor surgery) it looked like my starter was appropriately bubbly and so I put it to the test. The result was a couple of moderately tasty hockey pucks. I fed the remaining starter and let it ripen for a full week, feeding it daily. I found that if I increased the volume of flour a bit, I no longer had the watery alcohol layer known as hooch.

I let the dough rise overnight this time, punched it down in the morning and let it rise on the pizza stone until mid-morning when I felt it had risen sufficiently for a successful baking. This time, it came out very nicely, though the taste was a bit heavy and the bread was still a little denser than I liked. I fed the leftover starter and stuck it in the fridge, where it continued to bubble. Today, I took the starter out right after church, fed it and let the sponge form all afternoon. By dinnertime, it was nicely frothy, smelled great and looked quite ready to mix.

At Christy's suggestion, I attempted to use the KitchenAid dough hook, although the result was not quite what I wanted. Seems like a double loaf recipe may be a bit large for our mixer and it overwhelmed the hook. I also lost some of that monastic feel by using a power tool rather than my hands to do the work. I somehow feel a need to put my fingers in the dough to feel like it's my own bread.

This dough is rising quite nicely and I just punched it down to rise again overnight. In the morning, I'll form two loaves and rest them on the pizza stone during the work day tomorrow, and bake them in the afternoon. I'll report back when I taste :)